


Whatever Gets the Job Done

by infiniteeight



Category: Dredd (2012)
Genre: Gen, Hostage Situation, i have no idea how that happened given the fandom, somehow there is no blood in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 20:37:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5470091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infiniteeight/pseuds/infiniteeight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Chief Judge needs Dredd to resolve a hostage situation. She insists he take a partner, even though Dredd hates working with a partner and is always a pain in the ass about it.</p>
<p>At least, he always used to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whatever Gets the Job Done

**Author's Note:**

  * For [askita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/askita/gifts).



The Chief judge stood at her desk, staring down at the report displayed on its surface, and carefully buried her irritation that she was going to have this God damned conversation _again_. There was no help for it; Dredd was a stubborn man, and while he always respected her authority, he made damn sure she knew he had a mind of his own. She’d known that when she called Dredd to her office, she knew it now, and she wasn’t going to let personal aggravation prevent her from making the correct decision.

Motion in the corner of her eye prompted her to look up; Dredd stood in the open doorway. “Dredd,” she acknowledged.

He nodded. “Chief.”

“Come in.” She straightened up, letting one hand rest on the desk surface and dropping the other to her side. “There’s a hostage situation in progress on the Sky-Rail in Sector 14. A negotiator has been on site for twelve hours, but he’s advised that he’s unlikely to be able to resolve the situation. We need to organize a tactical solution.” Dredd just waited; she hadn’t asked a question, and he wasn’t the type to fill the silence for the sake of social smoothness. The Chief Judge swallowed a sigh. “You’ll be leading the raid. You’ll take a minimum of one other Judge with you.” It was almost impossible to execute a one man raid without losing hostages. Frankly, it was almost impossible to organize a two man raid without losing hostages, but she trusted Dredd’s ability to do it with one partner more than she trusted anyone else to do with the recommended team of five.

“I can handle it,” Dredd said, as expected.

“I’m sure you can,” the Chief said. “But the margin of error is smaller if you take a partner, and this isn’t a negotiation. Pick someone or I’ll pick for you.” According to their usual script, this was Dredd’s cue to insist that being forced to work around another Judge would hinder him more than help him, and she’d disagree.

But Dredd… paused. “I’ll take Anderson.”

Only her habitual stoicism kept the surprise off the Chief’s face. Dredd had passed Anderson, sure, but there hadn’t been any indication that she’d actually impressed him. Apparently, ‘She’s a pass’ was as much of an understatement when it came to Anderson as ‘Drug bust’ had been when it came to Peach Trees.

“Good,” the Chief Judge said aloud. “Head to the hostage site now; I’ll have Anderson meet you there.” She pinned Dredd with a look. “You’re not to execute the raid until she arrives. Clear?”

“Clear.” Dredd turned and left without waiting for further instruction. The Chief snorted to herself. Anderson aside, Dredd hadn’t changed. With a few taps on her comms, she opened a direct line to Anderson. “Judge Anderson, drop whatever you’re doing and meet Judge Dredd in Sector 14.”

A wealth of questions hung in the air for a moment, but all Anderson said was, “Yes, sir.” 

Having been passed by Dredd, of all Judges, the Chief wouldn’t have thought that Anderson would have any hesitance left, but it seemed there was some green to rub off, after all. “Dredd will conduct a tactical raid to resolve an ongoing hostage situation,” the Chief added. “You’re an extra pair of hands to make sure the hostages all make it out.”

“You insisted he take a partner,” Anderson said.

The Chief smiled. Maybe there wasn’t that much green left, after all. “Report when the situation is in hand.”

***

The site of the hostage situation was a stretch of Sky-Rail between two stations. There was no direct ground access; the only support under the train had no maintenance ladder. Dredd looked up and down the stretch of rail. The nearest support with a ladder was a hundred yards away, easily enough space for the hostage taker to see them coming and blow the train. A Hall of Justice eye in the sky hovered overhead, weapons targeting the train. Their ordinance was far too heavy to pick off the hostage taker without killing the hostages, but they would tear him to pieces if he tried to exit.

The train was old; this line hadn’t been upgraded. Five cars, but if the hostage taker had any sense he’d have concentrated the hostages in one of them. It was impossible to tell which one, as he’d blacked out all the windows.

Dredd dismounted from his Lawmaster and parked it in defensive mode, then strode into the mobile command center set up by the negotiator. The man standing with authority by a communications link was older, dark skinned, and so thin he almost looked liked he’d been stretched to meet a height requirement. When he caught sight of Dredd, he nodded respectfully. “Judge. I’m Bernard--”

Dredd held up a hand. “Another Judge will be joining us.” Listening to the man repeat himself would be tiresome.

The negotiator frowned. “Of course.”

The rumble of an arriving Lawmaster announced Anderson two minutes later. She strode in wearing her helmet. “Dredd,” she greeted him

“Anderson.” Dredd turned back to the negotiator. “Now.”

“Judges,” the man started again. “My name is Bernard Laney. I’ve been the point of contact for negotiations for the past thirteen hours.”

Anderson removed her helmet and smiled at Laney. “Cassandra Anderson,” she said, tucking her helmet under one arm and holding out a hand for him to shake. “Thanks for bringing us up to speed.”

Laney visibly relaxed and Dredd suppressed a derisive snort, lest he undo Anderson’s work. A negotiator shouldn’t be so concerned with social niceties. Regardless, they needed his information, so Dredd kept silent and waited for him to deliver it. 

“The hostage taker is Jackson Weis,” Laney went on. He brought up a picture on the command center’s console. Weis was white, unemployed, and had no criminal record, which would have been remarkable if he hadn’t been four months shy of his sixteenth birthday. Dredd grunted, but waved for the negotiator to go on when Laney looked over at him. “He boarded the train here,” Laney brought up a map of the Sky-Rail and touched a stop about a mile away, “and planted home cooked explosives all over the train. He blew two of them to take out the nav computer and the drive system. Once the train was stopped, he used spray paint to black out the windows and had one of the hostages call the Hall of Justice. According to Weis, he has twenty-nine people.”

“So he wasn’t backed into this,” Anderson observed. “He wanted hostages.”

“Yes, Judge,” Laney said. 

“What are his demands?” Dredd asked.

“The usual,” Laney said, looking tired. “He wants some buddies released from the isocubes.”

“Not going to happen.”

“I’m aware of that.” 

“Do we have confirmation on the rest of the explosives?” Anderson asked.

“We have eyewitness reports and camera footage of the train being disabled,” Laney said.

“That confirms two explosive packages,” Dredd said flatly. “It doesn’t say anything about the reality of additional packages. The Hall of Justice tracks the sale of anything that can be used to create explosive compounds; it’s possible he was only able to acquire enough to disable the train, not enough to actually carry out his threat.”

“I’ll arrange for a sniffer,” Laney said after a moment. He turned and left them at the console.

They were silent for a moment. Dredd hadn’t worked with Anderson since Peach Trees, four months ago, and most of the scuttlebutt around the Hall of Justice was about her psychic abilities, rather than her record. 

“At least you didn’t leave it behind this time,” Dredd said finally, indicating her helmet.

“I thought it might be useful to have a read on Laney,” Anderson said. “Besides, if this guy blows us up, my helmet isn’t going to make much of a difference.”

“Hmmm. You’d be surprised,” Dredd said. “And you’re here as a Judge, not a psychic. Laney wants to be done with this and Weis wants his friends back; no telepathy necessary to know that.”

Anderson frowned, but before she could respond, Laney was back. “We’ll have a sniffer crawling up the support in five,” he reported.

A sniffer was a robot equipped with a sensor suite designed to detect a wide range of chemical compounds. The body was eight articulated legs, capable of navigating any type of terrain, including the vertical. Five minutes later, a sniffer technician joined them at the console. Dredd pegged his age at twenty or twenty-two, but he moved with crisp precision as he accessed the sniffer’s feed and set up his analysis.

He was still working when the negotiator’s contact phone started ringing. “You want to listen in?” Laney asked before he picked up.

“No.” The situation was unlikely to change, and Laney would tell them if it did. Dredd kept his eyes on the sniffer tech’s work, peripherally aware that Anderson was shaking her head no, as well.

The series of graphs on the screen abruptly came alive with arcs and spikes of color coded information. “I have the data feed,” the tech said. “What are you looking for?”

“Explosives,” Dredd said.

“That’s a pretty broad category,” the tech observed, but his hands started moving over the keyboard anyway.

“Homemade,” Anderson added. “By someone who is unlikely to have access to advanced processing techniques.”

Dredd hummed. “We don’t know that for sure.” The tech, Dredd noticed, didn’t pause, just started working in Anderson’s suggestions. Good.

“If we don’t find anything, we can broaden the parameters,” Anderson said. “But if it pans out, we won’t have wasted our time with a general search.”

True enough. The tech’s array of graphs lost some curves and gained others, the colors shifting as the code scrolled up the side of the screen faster than Dredd could read. After a minute or two the shifting slowed and settled until the only movement was within the surviving graphs. “There’s definitely explosives on that train,” the tech said. “Pretty unstable ones.”

“The perp detonated two to disable the train,” Dredd informed him. “Could you be reading residue?”

The tech shook his head and pointed to the graphs. “Not only are there spikes, the background level of these indicators is far too high. The sniffer has a general baseline, but it also builds a local baseline at the site before targeting. The local baseline here shows the effect of the previous detonation, which means the spikes represent existing concentrations of these chemicals.”

Dredd hadn’t really expected this to be that easy, but it was worth checking. “Can you determine where the explosives are?”

“The sniffer’s sensors aren’t directional,” the tech said, but his hands were already moving over the keyboard, “but I can have it crawl along the length of the train and see if there’s any change in concentration.”

“Do it.”

“Laney has Weis distracted for now,” Anderson said, nodding at the negotiator, who was still on the phone. “But if Weis notices the sniffer, we could lose a hostage.”

Dredd grunted. “Can’t be helped if we don’t know which car Weis is holding them in.”

“I could locate them if I got closer,” Anderson offered, tapping her temple.

“The Sky-Rail is at least twenty-five feet just to the base of the train,” Dredd said.

“Thirty,” the tech put in.

Dredd nodded. “Thirty. And that’s if you were standing directly beneath it. Is your range that long?”

Anderson frowned. “I could probably get a feeling for them. But probably not enough to pinpoint location.”

Dredd just hummed again, unsurprised. If Anderson could have contacted Weis that easily, she could probably have disabled him, and the Chief would have called her first, not Dredd. 

“If it helps,” the tech said, “I’ve got the sniffer set up to do the traverse on the underside of the rail platform. The readings won’t be as strong as if it was right on top of the train, but they should be good enough, and given the concern for stealth, it seemed an appropriate trade off.”

Huh. “Good,” Dredd said shortly. He paused, considering an option. “Can you get infrared readings from beneath the train? We could locate the hostages by body heat.”

But the tech shook his head. “The structure isn’t the issue there, it’s the train. Between the materials used in the construction of these old trains and ambient heat from the sun, infrared signatures blur out to uselessness.”

“If I’m reading these graphs correctly,” Anderson said slowly, “the explosives are urea nitrate.”

The tech nodded. “More or less. It’s not surprising; it’s relatively easy to acquire the materials to make it, and it’s easier to set off than some others.”

“Could you detect regular urea?”

“Sure,” the tech said. He started typing again, and another graph joined the group on the screen. It had the same profile as the urea nitrate graph. “Why?”

“Because Weis has had twenty-nine people terrified people under his control for more than thirteen hours now,” Anderson said. “Even if none of them urinated in fear, it’s almost certain that not all of them could hold it for that long. If there’s an elevated level of urea, above even the explosives level, that’s probably our hostages.”

“Nice,” the tech made a few more adjustments to his code. “Okay, we’re good to go. You want me to start the traverse?”

“Yeah,” Dredd said.

The tech pressed a key and a new graph appeared at the top of the screen, this one much wider than the others. A clusters of color coded lines started to creep across the width of the graph, showing the results of the sniffer’s traverse. 

Halfway through the process, Laney rejoined them. “I hope you’ve got a plan, because Weis is almost at the end of the his rope,” he reported. “Right now I’ve got him believing that we’re having trouble finding his buddies in the isocubes, but he won’t buy that for much longer. What’s this?” He waved at the graph. 

Dredd let the tech fill Laney in, instead stepping away for a moment and gesturing for Anderson to join him. “At least the first half the train is wired to blow,” Dredd said. They’d seen that much on the traverse in progress. “So it seems safe to assume the rest of the train is, as well. If Weis is smart, he’ll have gathered the hostages in one car to make them easier to monitor. We set off the explosives on one of the unoccupied cars to draw him out, one of us takes him down while the other secures the hostages.”

Anderson frowned. “The hostages are his only leverage. In the event of an attack, he should stay as close to them as possible, not go running towards an explosion.”

“Weis is a kid who wants his friends back,” Dredd said. “Not an experienced criminal. If he knew what he was doing, he would only have wired one train car--less explosives required, less chance of an unplanned detonation, less chance of discovery. But he wasn’t thinking of controlling the hostages, he was thinking of controlling the train. To him, losing part of the train means having that control compromised, hostages aside.”

“So how do we know that he isolated the hostages at all?” Anderson asked, but after a moment she answered her own question. “Once he had control of the train, he’d quickly realize he couldn’t watch them all unless they were all together.” She considered the plan for a moment. “I’ll secure the hostages.”

“Good,” Dredd said. The public found female Judges somewhat less intimidating. Idiotic, but it meant the hostages were less likely to panic and do something stupid if Anderson was the one handling them. “You have a grapple and ascender?” Anderson nodded and the two of them retrieved the parts of the grapple guns from various pouches. When assembled, they were about the same size as a Lawgiver, capable of anchoring a grapple from up to twenty yards away. The ascenders were smaller and hooked to their belts.

“Judges?” the tech called. They rejoined him. Laney frowned at the grapple guns, but said nothing. The graph at the top of the screen was complete, and they didn’t need the tech’s pointing finger to see the spike in the yellow curve that indicated urea. “There are explosives throughout the train, but the hostages are definitely being held in the central car.”

Weis must have felt more secure in the middle, like taking shelter in an interior room when a building was under attack. But in a train, it only meant that Dredd and Anderson would have multiple vectors for an attack. “I need a schematic of the train.” 

The sniffer tech minimized his control system and stepped away from the console, letting Laney pull up the schematic. 

“Anderson, you’ll go in here,” Dredd said, tapping on the back of the train. Forcing the lock on the rear access door, intended for emergency access rather than passenger boarding, would be quieter than the other options. “I’ll trigger the explosives in this car,” he tapped on the front of the train.

“How?” Laney asked, frowning. “You don’t know exactly where they are.”

“Hot shot,” Dredd said. “It’ll raise the temperature of the car rapidly. Could blow the whole car, but I doubt Weis used that much explosive.” He could use high-ex if the hotshot didn’t work, but if the hot shot worked Weis might think it was just his own explosives destabilizing.

Laney didn’t look reassured “If it does, couldn’t that pull the rest of the train off the track?”

It could, but Dredd was willing to bet not. “Sky-Rail cars clamp to the rail during unexpected failures,” he said aloud. “It’ll hold.”

The negotiator took a deep breath. “All right. What do you want me and my people to do?”

“Get him on the phone.” Dredd straightened up and stepped back from the console. He looked at Anderson, who silently settled her helmet back on her head. “Otherwise, stay out of my way.”

Dredd and Anderson stepped out of the command center and opened a comm link between them. “Take up position,” Dredd ordered. “We’ll go on my command.”

“Yes, sir,” Anderson said briskly. They moved towards either end of the train, still staying some distance away. With the windows blacked out, they couldn’t see in, but neither could Weis see out very well. They only needed a minute unnoticed.

They got it. When Dredd reached the best position for a rapid approach, he looked to his right and found Anderson also in position. “Ready for your go,” Anderson reported over comms.

Dredd scanned the train one last time for surprises, but there was no change. He hooked the grapple gun to his belt and raised his Lawgiver. “Hot shot,” he said crisply. The gun echoed him obligingly. Dredd pulled the trigger and with a faint _whump_ the gun spat out a glowing ball. It arced through the air. The incandescent material melted straight through the train’s window glass on contact and for a moment a faint flicker of light from within the car seemed to be the only reaction. Dredd waited. 

Suddenly, the train car shuddered and a window shattered, flames and smoke belching out. Then a second window went, venting it’s own smoke and fire. “Go!” Dredd barked, holstering his Lawgiver and sprinting for the train. He drew the grapple as he ran, aiming it at the concrete side of the rail platform. The grappled leaped from the gun and bit into the structure. Dredd didn’t stop running, just hooked the line to the ascender on his belt. By the time he activated the ascender, he was almost directly under the train. During the brief climb, Dredd glanced down the length the train, looking for Anderson. She was already at the top, her grappling gun having been in hand when he gave the order. 

Then the rail platform was looming above him. Dredd used the shaft of the grapple to boost himself up enough to get an arm over the edge of the platform, then disconnected the ascent line and rolled onto the narrow space between the edge of the platform and the rail. The train smouldered. There was nowhere to take cover if Weis had the means to shoot, so Dredd kneeled up and shot himself an opening large enough to duck inside.

There wasn’t much to burn inside the train, just the plastic seat pads and some trash. Dredd held his breath through the noxious smoke, the distance too short to bother with a respirator. When he got to the door to the next car, he peered through the smoke-smudged glass and found himself staring right at Weis, who looked panicked. Seeing Dredd, Weis blanched and turned and ran.

Dredd cursed and forced the door, warped from the heat, open with a grunt of effort. Dredd ran the length of the car, but stopped before the next door and quickly looked through. Anderson was in front of the hostages, Weis in front of her, his back to the door. Craning his neck, Dredd could see the detonator. Not a dead man’s switch. Good. 

Weis glanced over his shoulder, so Dredd yanked the door open and fired off a stun. Weis dropped like a stone, shuddering as the blue stun field crawled over his body. 

“Anderson,” Dredd said casually. “Everything secure?”

“Yes sir.” Anderson sounded like she wanted to smile, but it didn’t show. “100% recovered.”

Dredd just nodded and open a channel to the mobile command center. “Situation resolved,” he reported. “The hostages could use a hand getting down from here, though.” 

Closing the channel, Dredd reached down and grabbed and fistful of Weis’s shirt. Hauling him partway up off the floor, Dredd dragged him towards Anderson and the exit Anderson had come in; it would be easier than dragging Weis through the smouldering car on the other end. He jerked his head at Anderson as he passed her and she followed him through the cluster of silent, shell-shocked hostages and out of the train car.

“Where are we going?” she asked when they were clear of the civilians.

“Maintenance ladder,” Dredd said. “It’ll take Laney’s people a good five minutes to get stairs and victims services in place, and the hostages have priority. I don’t feel like waiting.” When they were out of the train, he hoisted Weis up over his shoulder, and Anderson hopped over the central rail to walk next to Dredd on the other side of the platform. Dredd could tell she wanted to say something. “What?” he said after a moment.

“You said I was here as a Judge, not a psychic.” Dredd just grunted. That was obvious; she hadn’t used her abilities at all. Anderson went on. “The other Judges, they say I only passed because of what I am. And they don’t even know that I lost my primary weapon during my evaluation.”

“You believe them?”

“No.” Anderson sounded confident of that. Good. “But all that means is that I can’t figure why you actually passed me.”

Dredd grunted. “Do you need to know? You’re doing the work. That’s what matters.”

Anderson thought about it. “No, I don’t need to know,” she said at last.

They reached the maintenance ladder and climbed down, Weis still slung over Dredd’s shoulder. When he got to the ground, Dredd called for Weis to be picked while Anderson remote controlled their Lawmasters from the mobile command center to their location.

They mounted their Lawmasters, but Dredd called out Anderson’s name before she could start hers. She looked over at him, head tilted. “Your Lawgiver is a tool,” Dredd said. “It’s not sacred, and losing it isn’t a sin. It’s an automatic fail because losing your primary weapon is an indication of that you aren’t capable of the job. But you have other tools at your disposal, including your abilities and your brains, and you got the job done, even when, as far as you knew, it wasn’t your job to do. That’s why you passed.”

Anderson nodded acknowledgement. “Thanks.” 

“One more thing.” Dredd suppressed a sigh. “We’ll probably be working together again.”

Anderson’s shoulders went back and she half turned, facing him more directly. “Why?”

“Because the Chief is always on me to take a partner into situations like this,” Dredd grumbled. “And I didn’t argue as much this time.”

Anderson’s huff of laughter was almost silent, but only almost. “Whatever gets the job done, right, Dredd?”

Dredd snorted loudly, but by the way Anderson grinned at him, she knew just what he meant.

~End~


End file.
